Descriptive Essay: RubyJane Anderson

Descriptive Scene

Even though I am happy to be here, I feel so uncomfortable, like everyone is staring at me. I am self conscious, I feel like a giant. Standing at 5 foot 10, I tower over most of the other women in the audience. Everywhere I go I stick out like a sore thumb. I never felt comfortable in my own skin.

I have always been tall. I can remember being in second grade and having to stand in the back of the line because I was tallest, which sucked because I never go to be line leader. Its actually pretty embarrassing to have guys have to look up at you to talk to you. Something about that just felt so unpretty.

“Somethings happening!”

Suddenly, the lights go out. A wave of silence rolls over the crowd.

We are at the Electric Factory, the largest “small venue” in Philly. Its standing-room only, but there is a balcony with a bar that only people of drinking age can go. The people standing on the balcony are all drunk and happy. They are all jumping around so much, I’m fearful that the balcony will collapse.

The lights are still out, people start chattering again, thinking its a glitch in the lighting or sound system. Suddenly, a single white spotlight illuminates a figure dressed in a brown robe that appears to be made from the same material as a burlap sack. People don’t notice it at first, but when everyone realizes what is happening, they are quiet immediately. The figure has on a mask that covers his entire head. It looks like a “Wild Thing” from Maurice Sendaks novel of the same title. It has a long, crooked nose and a furry mane.

Slowly, the robed figure walks across the stage, each step placed cautiously and purposefully. It stops at the right corner, turning to face the audience and begins raising his hands very slowly. His fingers are brown, long, thick, and crooked, somewhat resembling branches of a tree. On the tips of each finger is a bright white laser, the light of which illuminates the back wall of the venue.

I was hypnotized by this being. There was something so incredibly enchanting about the way it moved. I completely lost myself in its face, then snapped back into reality. I realized that I was standing on my tippy-toes and was instantly mortified. Everyone must have been staring at me! I quickly corrected my posture to my usual slouch (if I slouched just right, I could be 5’8) and looked around, sure that everyone would be staring at me and mocking me to their friends. But, as I turned my head, I saw that everyone was just as I was a few moments earlier, completely lost in themselves. It was then, right at that moment, when I realized that everyone was way too caught up with themselves to really care about what I was doing.

This completely shocked me. If no one was looking at me now, were they looking at me when I walked down the street? I am an idiot. Was I so vain that I thought that everyone was always caught up in how I looked that is was the center of their mine.

I am not the center of everyone’s universe. In fact, I am perhaps but a tiny blip on their radar, a drop of water in their ocean, a single cell in their anatomy. If I am nothing to these strangers, why did I care so vastly what they thought of me?

I didn’t.

I didn’t care what these strangers thought of me. Everything that I had been afraid of, all the nights spent perfecting my slouch in the mirror, avoiding heels like the plague, and cursing my parents for “tall-genes” was not to avoid judgement from others, it was to deny who I am from myself.

I am Ruby Jane Anderson, I am 5 foot 10 inches, I am tall and I am proud.

In order to find myself in this one moment, I had to first lose myself.

It continues to lift its hands. As it does this, the music gradually gets louder and louder, until I can no longer hear my insecurities tormenting me.